


Mercy

by violetmessages



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Dark, Depression, F/M, Gwen is very traumatized, Post-Series 03: Children of Earth (Torchwood)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetmessages/pseuds/violetmessages
Summary: Sometimes Gwen wants to take little Anwen and slip cyanide into her bottle.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to princessoftheworlds for beta-ing

Sometimes Gwen wants to take little Anwen and slip cyanide into her bottle. She wants to apologize for bringing her into this world, this world of darkness, and pain, and into a country whose government will take its children to give away for its own life. 

She wants to take her gun and shoot Rhys dead and poison Anwen as a final act of mercy, before pointing it at herself. 

She wants to kill Anwen before something more painful does it for her. 

Rhys worries about her. Of course he does. She doesn’t really speak anymore - she just stares out the window for hours on end, holding her child. Why would she? She’s just lost her entire family. Tosh and Owen and Ianto are all sleeping in their graves. And Jack’s fucked off to space. 

He couldn’t even be bothered to grieve with her. She planned the funeral for Ianto herself. She took care of his belongings. She buried him alone, with his sister who didn’t trust her. Then she and Rhys, who had been declared dead, left to go in hiding for the rest of their lives. 

She can’t sleep. She can’t bring herself to eat properly. She’s drowning in grief. She won’t let Rhys go anywhere alone, and Anwen is never out of her arms, unless she’s in Rhys’ or in the bassinet next to their bed. 

The truth is, she’ll probably never let Anwen or Rhys out of her sight. She keeps a loaded gun in every drawer of every room. Because she is Torchwood. The last member - the final member. Archie has died and left Torchwood Two stagnant and rotting. Torchwood Four is lost. And Torchwood One was destroyed even before she knew what Torchwood was. 

Gwen remembers her first day. How naive she’d been, as if belonging to a secret agency was exciting.  \- if you don't like it, you can just quit, she'd reasoned with herself.

She’d been wrong. 

Torchwood seeped into your soul and stayed there. It festered like an old wound, rotting you from the inside out, until you were nothing but a hollow figment of yourself. Less than human. A group of shattered, hollow, non-humans that fought to protect the rest. 

It’s all gone now. 

And it’s her fault she is here. She was so curious, so hungry to know the truth. She saw a man who couldn’t be killed kill another woman, and she couldn’t let it go. She joined the life-changing cult that they all loved, and she loved it more than anything else. That was the worst part. She loved being part of it; she loved having the rush, knowing something that any ordinary person did not. She hated coming home because there was so much more to see in the universe. Finally - proof they were not alone in the universe. Proof that there was something else out there calling her name. She opened the box of horrors, even though everyone warned her not to. 

And it spat in her face. 

She wishes she never joined. Every day, that’s the only thought she has. When she's staring out the window, aimlessly. When she lifts Anwen to her breast to give her tainted milk - anything that comes from Gwen is immeasurably polluted by Torchwood. Anwen cries and cries, and she wishes that she could soothe her daughter properly. She wishes she could give her some relief. 

The only way she knows to offer Anwen relief is by ripping her life away before she has to suffer any more. Poisoning her, shooting her, shoving a pillow into her face until the life fades away from her eyes. The only way out of Torchwood is death. Let her die happy as an infant, surrounded by ones she loves, before she has to die alone and painfully, like Tosh, like Owen, like Ianto. 

Gwen holds her daughter and thinks of the million ways that she can painlessly give Anwen the mercy she deserves. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos/Comments are appreciated.
> 
> Find me on tumblr [here](https://violetmessages.tumblr.com/)


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